Vertigo
by RCB
Summary: A comment fic written for the prompt: Dean is always dizzy. Gen rating given for language Additional notes at beginning of story.


A/N: Set sometime before season four, maybe mid-season three, I guess. Written for **roque_clasique**'s (livejournal) birthday comment fic meme. The prompt was: "Dean is always dizzy." It's close enough, I think. He's not _always_ dizzy, but it happens a lot. H/C with bonus smoking!Dean. A big thanks to **mrstotten** (livejournal) for the beta. *smish* All remaining mistakes are my own.

///

The first time it happened, Dean was driving and Sam was sleeping in the passenger seat. One minute everything was fine. Dean was contemplating how best to wake up Sam _-cranking up the music, or a hard flick to the forehead-_ and the next minute the whole world turned upside down on itself, and proceeded to whirl around at dizzying speeds.

Dean had no time to react. The best he could do was yell for Sam, and hold on tight to the steering wheel. He never did see Sam, but he knew he was there; Sam's hands covered his own on the wheel, and there was a fair amount of muffled cursing in Dean's right ear.

"Brake! Brake!"

In Dean's left ear, he heard the familiar sound of the Impala's tires trying to comply with Sam's wishes. Dean had his foot down as hard as he could, hoping that it would serve to both stop the once speeding car, and ground him enough so that he wouldn't start spinning with the rest of the world.

Dean couldn't move, despite what was about to come next.

"Jesus," Sam breathed as he pulled Dean from the driver's seat. Dean had lost track of him while he'd been heaving up the ham-steak special from "Mabel's Best Little Diner in Texas" onto the Impala's front seat.

"Dean, can you hear me!?" Sam was suddenly yelling.

"Yes!"

"Welcome back."

The world was done with its crazy spinning thing, and Dean was able to survey the damage. They were sitting in the gravel along the side of the road; Dean essentially sitting on Sam's lap, with Sam's arm wrapped securely around Dean's waist. Dean tried to get his head around what had just happened; he felt like he'd just gone ten rounds with a banshee, and his mouth was sour and dry.

"The _hell_…"

"We need to get you to a hospital," Sam said.

Dean was having a hard time just keeping his eyes open, but he managed to refuse. Out loud, he hoped, when he felt Sam trying to get them both up on their feet. Dean did his best to help, and used the Impala's rear fender to hold on to for some sort of balance. Once upright, Dean laid himself over her back end, miserable, and silently lamenting her current condition.

"Sammy, grab my-"

"Here."

Dean's cigarette pack was shoved into his waiting hand. Dean extracted one quickly and lit it with his eyes still closed. He felt a little better; the spinning had stopped, but every once in a while it would give a sudden shift, threatening to get going again.

"Wow, I don't even know where to start," Sam's voice was next to him. Dean didn't open his eyes, no sense tempting fate.

"I'll get it. Just give me a minute," Dean said.

"Yeah, that's gonna happen. You can't even stand up straight."

"I just need a minute."

"I totally told you that place was sketchy. They're probably going to have to pump your stomach now."

"Ugh. No thanks."

Dean felt something wiping his forehead. He risked opening one eye, and saw that Sam was wiping at his face with a sleeve pulled down over his hand. "You're sweating bullets. Shit." Sam's face seemed to begin to wobble in a threatening way, so Dean snapped his eye back closed.

Dean didn't want to move, so he took a final drag from his cigarette, and extended his arm out for Sam to put it out. He heard Sam make a disgusted noise, but he took it from Dean's hand anyway.

Dean might have dozed off directly after that because one minute he was listening to the sound of gravel being grated together under Sam's foot, and the next he was being grabbed from behind.

"You gotta sit down. I need in the trunk."

Dean didn't argue; he was exhausted and felt liked he weighed a thousand pounds. Judging from Sam's occasional grunting, Dean thought that maybe it was true, and he did weigh a thousand pounds. It was a curse, he decided. That had to be it. Food poisoning couldn't make a person suddenly weigh a thousand pounds.

The hasty theory sounded reasonable to Dean, and it was the last thing he remembered before Sam was suddenly bugging him again, this time to get into the backseat of the car.

"She needs-"

"I took care of it. You passed out." Sam's voice was worried, and Dean risked another peek. Sam's worry lines were being worked overtime, and Dean sleepily thought that they were totally going to leave a mark.

Sam helped him get to his feet, and once up, Dean opened both eyes. He tried to walk to the Impala himself, but no matter how hard he tried, he overshot it and ended up at her trunk instead of the doors.

"Okay. Little help here?"

Dean's dignity suffered, but the goal of reaching the back seat was finally accomplished. With his eyes closed again, he heard her being started up, and before he drifted off again, Dean thought he detected a hint of sulking in the engine.

"Sorry, baby. I'll make it up to youuzz….zzzz…"

///

They said it was the flu.

An ER doctor with a clipboard, an appropriately sympathetic smile, and most importantly, a prescription pad that he was negligent about keeping track of, said that a few days rest and plenty of fluids would be the best medicine. He wrote Dean a prescription for something to help him keep the fluids down, and Dean was released.

Dean waited in the passenger seat of his own car, while Sam filled the prescription. From there they found a decent motel to hole up in. Surprisingly, Dean never had to take the prescription. In fact, he fully recovered by the next morning, and was ready to get back on the road.

Sam, however, refused to move a muscle and insisted they give it one more day. Dean prodded him every chance that he got, hoping that Sam would give in and want out of the too small motel room. He chain-smoked while looking at porn on Sam's laptop, and wore nothing but Sam's boxers citing lack of clean laundry, but it didn't work. Sam's jaw tensed and flexed a few times, but they ended up spending the night again.

The next morning, they left Texas, and the strange, less than twenty-four hour flu behind them.

Or so they thought.

///

The next time it happened, Dean was alone. The brothers were hunting a vampire nest in Oklahoma, and thought that they had a pretty good lead on where the vampires were holing up. They planned to check it out in the morning, and Dean had gone out to pick up something for dinner.

He took the extra long, scenic route back. He listened to some music, checked out the layout of the town, and sampled a few slices of the pepperoni and extra bacon pizza on his way. The car and the motel room both felt a little cramped lately, and he wasn't really in any hurry to get back. There was a microwave in their room, and Sam would just have to deal. Besides, Dean reasoned, Sam should have thought about that before he started pulling all his emo pouting bullshit.

While Dean still had the third slice of pizza in his hand, his vision blurred. He gripped the steering wheel tightly, and tried to focus long enough to get over to the shoulder. He felt for the gear shift and slammed it into park, just before using his left hand to find the door handle. He tumbled out of the car, and fell face first into the dirt, just in time for the nausea to kick in.

Everything was spinning again, like it had in Texas. He felt like he was going to be caught up in it, and flung away from anything resembling solid ground. Desperate, his arms flailed out, looking for something, anything to hold on to. All he found was rubber, but it would do, and he gratefully grabbed hold of the Impala's tire.

He lost track of time after that, but if he had to guess, he'd been there an hour before he felt that it was safe to let go of the tire. It was maybe another hour before he managed to crawl his way back to the still open car door, and at least another fifteen minutes to find his cell phone on the seat. It would have taken longer, except that it was ringing, and that worked as a decent beacon for Dean to focus on.

"Where the hell have you been?!?"

Dean could just picture Sam: he was pacing, and most likely had some epic nostril flaring going on. Dean grunted and leaned forward into the upholstery, his free hand brushed up against something, which he grabbed. He lit a cigarette, and tried to ignore the bitter, acrid taste in his mouth in favor of the needed nicotine.

"Need you to come get me." Dean pictured that the pacing and nostril flaring had just come to a grinding halt, and he could practically hear all of Sam's mentally rehearsed admonitions disintegrate into dust.

"Where are you?"

///

This time they diagnosed Dean with an inner ear infection. He had all the classic symptoms they said: dizziness, lack of balance, and it probably hadn't cleared up properly from Texas. Instead of going away, it had just festered and gotten worse. They couldn't explain the profuse sweating since he wasn't running a fever, but they weren't concerned with that. Dean was given a prescription for a strong antibiotic, told to quit smoking and get lots of rest. That was the best way to combat Vertigo, they said, and they sounded pretty sure about it.

He _hated_ that they told him that in front of Sam. His younger brother hovered, fussed, and was a general, all around pain in Dean's ass for the next five days. Besides that, Sam had taken up the habit of mumbling, and it really pissed Dean off.

At the end of five days, Dean took his last antibiotic pill and declared himself well. Sam disagreed, and there was a minor scuffle over the car keys. Dean won, but the concept of winning was subjective since Sam was nothing but doom and gloom all the way to Pennsylvania.

Once they got into New Wilmington, they stopped at a promising looking place to eat. The sign proclaimed that it was the best Amish restaurant in the county, and the Amish were weird, sure, but damn, they knew how to cook.

The restaurant was big, but it was also popular, and they had to wait awhile for a smoking table. Dean ignored Sam when the overly helpful hostess, in her neat little bonnet, told them that if they chose non-smoking it would only be ten minutes as opposed to forty-five for one in the smoking section.

When they finally got a table, Dean ordered the chicken fried steak dinner with extra gravy and then realized something. "There's no desserts on this menu," he told the waitress, a bit put out, because what use was an Amish restaurant without-

"That's because we have a separate dessert menu," she explained. She produced a separate menu, all devoted to pies, cakes, and other delectable baked pieces of heaven.

"I could die a happy man, Sam," Dean said while perusing his many options.

"Don't say stuff like that."

Dean looked up in guilty surprise, the menu set back down and forgotten. "Sorry, I just meant…Look, a figure of speech, okay?"

Sam's head was ducked down so Dean gave him a light kick under the table. "Okay?" he asked again when Sam looked up.

"Okay."

Dean decided that he could contemplate his pie choice in the men's room. If he took long enough, his food should be there by the time he got back, and then they'd be eating. That was a win-win scenario; he'd have food in his stomach while successfully avoiding any further heart to heart discussions since Sam hated it when Dean talked with his mouth full.

When Dean got back, though, his food wasn't waiting for him. There was a plate at his side of the table, but it wasn't his. "She coming back?" he asked Sam, sliding in front of the ginormous salad.

"I got that for you," Sam said. "Won't kill you to eat a vegetable once in a while."

"I'll kill you."

"Your chicken fried steak is still coming. Jesus, it's just a salad."

"It's a _salad_."

"Some kind of special house dressing," Sam shrugged before diving into his. He chewed thoughtfully. "I think it's got anchovies."

"Anchovies belong on pizza. Not salad. It's a waste of a perfectly good anchovy."

"Just eat it. Your immune system is probably starved for lack of-"

Dean picked up the fork and stabbed a wedge of lettuce with more vigor than was required, effectively shutting down Sam's impending lecture about immune systems, vitamins and minerals. He'd heard enough of that to last a lifetime, and if eating the stupid salad with anchovy dressing would spare him, he thought, then he'd eat the friggin' salad. It was incredibly salty, but it actually wasn't as bad as it had sounded.

He tried to ignore Sam's barely concealed victory smirk, but eventually settled for "accidentally" kicking Sam in the shins under the table. Sam gave a small yelp, but quickly brushed it off and pretended that it didn't happen. He later retaliated with a kick of his own when Dean was on his third bite of salad.

It hurt like a bitch, damn boots, but Dean didn't react. Instead, he fixed Sam with a look that promised-_Oh, it is **so** on-. _

Dean received one back that clearly said-_bring it_-.

It went on like that for several minutes, mutual threats of retribution and upcoming pain, but their conversation was interrupted when the waitress brought them their dinners. A silent truce was agreed upon, as per the usual treaty, for the duration of their dinner.

While waiting on dessert, Dean lit up a cigarette, the just rewards for waiting forty five minutes for a smoking table. Sam grimaced, and mumbled something sarcastic about smoking being totally healthy.

"I'm gonna quit," Dean said with a hand wave. He meant it, just not right then. He'd get to it, eventually.

Sam mumbled something else that Dean couldn't make out.

"Speak up!"

"I said you should start now. I'm pretty sure nicotine doesn't do shit for-Oh, shit! Dean??"

Sam was suddenly above him instead of in front of him, and the restaurant was spinning wildly out of control. Over Sam's shoulder the waitress was yelling something, but Dean couldn't hear her over the sudden loud ringing in his ear. Dean had absolutely no control over the situation. He panicked, and grabbed hold of Sam to keep him with him, just in case. He bunched his hands into Sam's shirt and held on for dear life.

Once he did, Sam seemed to be as unmoving as Dean while everything else was wild and out of control. Dean closed his eyes while Sam kept pleading for Dean to just hold on, everything would be okay, and _just hold on_.

Like Dean had any other options.

///

Dean woke up in a dimly lit room, looking at a cracked ceiling that he didn't recognize. He rubbed his eyes and turned onto his side. Open books were strewn everywhere, taking up every available space. There were so many books, in fact, that Dean had to double check and make sure that he was laying on a bed and not a table in the reference section of a library. Since it was Sam, Dean wouldn't have been at all surprised if it had turned out to be the latter.

"What's going on?"

"It's obviously a curse," Sam said. His eyes looked bleary, and he had been hunched over. He stood up and performed a bone cracking stretch, exposing a thin line of stomach, which he then scratched at, and yawned.

"And how's that going?" Dean asked. He felt like he'd just slept off a monster hangover, and he rubbed at his face, surprised at the amount of stubble he found there.

"Not very well."

"Take a break then. You look like shit."

Sam gave Dean a doubtful look.

"I'm fine. I'm gonna get up and take a shower."

"I'll come and-"

"I gotta take a piss, too. You are not coming into the _potty_ with me, so forget it."

"_Dean_."

"_Sam_."

There was another silent argument involving a fair amount of eyebrow raising, lowering, and waggling, during which it was agreed that Dean would use the restroom alone, since holding his dick with his brother standing by would no doubt shatter what remaining manly dignity that Dean had left.

However, Sam's eyebrow warned, if he heard just one sound…

"I'll yell. If anything. Pinky swear."

Sam and his eyebrow looked relieved.

Under the hot water, Dean relaxed a little. Though it defied every law of big brother physics, Sam was just trying to help. He peeked his head out of the shower curtain and knocked on the door twice before tossing out the only bone he had to throw.

"It happens every time I eat."

Dean wasn't sure but he thought he might have heard the sound of pages being rustled at a dizzying rate.

///

"Bobby's never heard of a curse that revolves around eating pork."

"Okay then."

"But then I remembered the chicken fried steak, and that's not pork. So it's not a pork curse."

"Good to know. Ham sandwiches-back on the menu."

"Dean."

"Sam."

Dean decided to lose the resulting staring contest because Sam looked tired. "Okay, look. I'll just try not to eat. Or something."

"Maybe I should drive from now on."

"That's even more absurd than a pork curse."

///

Dean couldn't just stop eating. Eventually, his stomach betrayed him and it growled louder than the Metallica tape that was playing. He turned up the radio, which helped him to disguise his traitorous stomach from Sam, but a few hundred miles later, he had to throw in the towel.

Sam gave him a questioning look, and Dean tapped twice on the fuel gauge in answer. They had a quarter of a tank, but Dean never let it get under that. Under that, Dad had always said, and you suck up the dirt and grime from the bottom of the tank. Dean knew it wasn't actually true, high school had at least been good for auto shop, but it had evolved into a powerful superstition that Dean never put to the test.

Luckily, Sam knew about Dean's gas gauge quirk so the stop wasn't at all questionable. Dean filled the tank, and went inside. Like a siren's sweet call, hot dogs, frozen cokes and an entire aisle of chips lured him away from the cashier and further into the store. Dean grabbed up what he could carry, popped open one of the bags of chips, and began munching on them on his way to the counter.

The clerk rang his assorted purchases up, including a half eaten hot dog, and the mostly eaten bag of chips. She gave Dean a somewhat dubious look when he tried to hand over the credit card, as if Dean might bite her hand while he was at it. Dean set it on the counter, and turned around while she ran it through, so that he could eat in peace.

He finished his meal, took his receipt in exchange for the clerk throwing out his garbage, and went back to the Impala. He tossed the bag into the passenger window, and it hit Sam square in the crotch. Dean felt cheerful as he walked around the car and got back behind the wheel.

On the road, Sam eventually offered Dean a bag of cheese crackers.

Dean lit a cigarette, and blew an impressive smoke ring. "Not hungry."

"You haven't eaten in six hours. I know you Dean, you've got to be starving by now."

"Nope. No eating means problem solved."

A few moments of silence.

"You ate in the gas station."

"What? No."

"What did you eat?" Sam's food was tossed onto the floor and his hand darted under the seat. "I need to put it in the food journal, Dean." He pulled out a black and white composition book and waved it around in Dean's face.

"Shut up about your stupid food journal!"

"We need to figure out the pattern or else-"

Dean grabbed the book out of Sam's hand; he managed to fight Sam off, keep the car on the road, and roll down the window all at the same time. He held the book out the window for a dramatic moment-_will I or won't I_- and then let go.

"You're such a dick."

"First it's a food journal, and next it'll be a piss journal. No thanks."

"Fine. What did you eat then?"

"Hot dog and some chips," Dean confessed.

"Is that all?"

"All I had time for. Scout's honor."

Sam broke out into a full grin.

"What?"

Sam reached under the seat and pulled out a brand new composition book. He managed to fight off Dean, pull out a pencil, and record Dean's gas station meal into it.

All at the same time.

///

An hour later, by the side of the road, Dean admitted defeat. "Call Bobby. This is just-"

"He doesn't know anything."

"Then-then just-"

_kill me now_

"Don't get over dramatic. We'll figure it out."

"I'm just-this is…"

"I know."

///

Dean didn't protest the latest ER visit because he was largely unconscious when he arrived. He couldn't dispute the history that Sam gave, and couldn't argue on behalf of his junk foods when Sam disparaged them to the doctor with his beloved food journal.

All Dean could do was try to keep his eyes open, a battle that he was losing. When he woke up, a look to the window told him that it was late in the night, and a glance to the right said that he was in a semi private room with a light snorer, and suddenly he had a doctor in his face.

She was older than him, maybe fifty or so, with some grey hair starting to show. She wore black frame glasses, and was overly fond of a small flashlight that she insisted on shining directly into Dean's eyes.

Repeatedly.

"Your brother is getting some sleep," she told him.

"Good he needs it. He looks terrible."

"Maybe because you're a huge pain in the ass."

"Wow. Your bedside manner sucks."

"That's what I've been told."

Dean succumbed to her probing and prodding, mainly because Sam wasn't there and he doubted his ability to make a getaway on his own. He was still dizzy, and the ringing was getting louder the longer he was awake.

"Okay," she said when she was finished.

"Okay?"

"I'm not sure what's wrong with you."

"How is that 'okay'?"

"But I'm going to find out. And I've already gotten your brother to agree to restraints if necessary."

"What the-"

"Look. You've tried this your way, right? How's that going for you?" she asked, with one hand on her hip.

Dean tried to argue that it was going just fine, thanks, when she interrupted him again. "And how about your brother? The one who looks like he could stand a few days sleep and maybe about ten more pounds on him? How's your plan going for him?"

"Well, uh, he was always kind of a girl," Dean said, weakly.

"Just give me two days. I think I _might_ know what's wrong with you, but there's no test for that. All I can do is rule out everything else," she explained.

"I don't know…"

"You have ringing in your ears? Having a hard time hearing out of it even when it's not ringing?" she asked. Dean hadn't told Sam about that, which meant Sam couldn't have told them about it, either.

"That's what I thought. You'd have to be half deaf to not be complaining about that," she pointed over her shoulder at Dean's roommate.

"He's not _that_ bad," Dean said.

"That's just it. He _is_ that bad. That just shows how much hearing you've already lost. We need to know exactly how much. I need you to stay and have tests."

Dean was about to argue some more, but that's when Sam came into the room. For the first time since Texas, Dean looked, really _looked_ at his brother.

Sam looked worse than Dean felt at the moment. Guilt was much more effective than any restraints that the doctor could come up with.

"Fine. Two days."

///

"I don't have any more blood left. You people are worse than vampires. And that's saying a lot!" Dean argued the second that Dr. Phyllis came into the room.

"Relax, I'm not here to draw any blood, Dean."

"Do you know what's wrong with him?" Sam asked before Dean could.

Dr. Phyllis asked Sam to have a seat and after giving Dean a list of all the things he _didn't_ have, which included epilepsy and brain tumors, she talked for a solid hour about something called Meniere's disease, and how Dean had to avoid all salt, alcohol and give up smoking. She droned on about how it wasn't known what caused the disease, that there was no cure, and that it would eventually lead to total hearing loss. Dean tried to tune her out when she said that it could spread to his other ear, but Sam kept interrupting and asking her questions which made tuning it all out impossible.

"So you've retained about twenty percent hearing in your right ear. That's not too bad considering the number of drop attacks you've had. Every time you have one, you lose more hearing," she said. "That's why it's important to try and avoid having them in the first place. No more than five hundred milligrams of salt a day, Dean. I mean it."

"That doesn't sound hard," Dean said.

"Dean, you probably eat about ten thousand milligrams a day. You even salt your bacon," Sam said.

Dr. Phyllis looked somewhat horrified. "Uh…yeah. No more salting bacon. Or eating bacon. Or ham, either. Nothing like that."

Sam's head did this bobbing thing every time Dr. Phyllis took something away from Dean: ham, chips, chili dogs, peanuts. Basically anything that had any taste at all whatsoever.

"It's possible that with these changes to your diet, you'll hit a remission period. Until you do, you'll have to make some lifestyle changes."

"Like what?"

"Well, for starters, I'd stay away from driving. You don't have to do a lot of driving for work, do you?"

Dean started laughing at that, and couldn't stop; not even when Dr. Phyllis and Sam decided that maybe Dean was ready for another dose of Valium.

///

"You didn't smoke in the hospital."

"I had Valium in the hospital."

"You're not supposed to-"

"I just voluntarily ate a salad, Sam. A _salad_."

"And you smoked while eating it!"

"Finding out that that you're slowly going deaf stresses a guy out."

"How did you even get a cigarette anyway? I threw all yours out."

"I. Know."

Dean silently promised retribution for that unforgiveable act, but Sam didn't even have the courtesy to act remorseful. Instead, he issued a pledge that he'd find Dean's new pack, and throw that out, too. Dean's eyebrow wished him luck with that one; he'd hid them pretty well this time.

"What's all that?" Dean asked of the brown paper bag in Sam's lap.

"Salt free chips, and unsalted peanuts. Stuff for the road."

"They make salt free chips? _Jesus_, that's disgusting. Salt is a major ingredient!"

"Well, you better learn to love them because…"

Dean turned his attention to the road, and his mostly deaf ear on his brother, whose diatribe immediately lowered into a muttering that Dean couldn't quite make out.

Maybe he could get used to this.

///

A/N2: For the purposes of this story, I cut down the length of time between eating high salt foods and a drop attack, and I played up the extreme exhaustion (a bit) that occurs afterward.


End file.
